Emotional education

By Heidi Wicks

Two Memorial graduates will receive Master’s Thesis Project
Awards for their work from the Canadian Society for the Study of
Higher Education (CSSHE) in Montreal on May 31. Both Albert
Johnson’s and Monique Bourgeois’ research explores
themes of emotion in education.

Both feel the award confirms that their research is indicative of
the concerns many have about education.

“The emotional versus logical domains are not as separate as
people think,” he said. “Philosophically, animal is
emotional and man is reasonable, but it’s not anywhere as
simple as that.”

He began his research by simply asking students what they thought
was effective teaching.

“We asked them to identify five characteristics of effective
on-campus teaching, and to tell why they’re important and how
instructors demonstrate that characteristic. And we asked them to
rank those characteristics.” He added that the study was
completed for both on-campus and distance students.

Those characteristics turned out to be (in order) respectful,
knowledgeable, approachable, engaging, communicative, organized,
responsive, professional and humorous – all emotionally
charged qualities.

While the results varied slightly for distance students, the bottom
line seems to highlight the importance of emotion in teaching.

“Students have to feel safe to learn,” said Mr.
Johnson.

Ms. Bourgeois, a Stephenville native, was prompted to explore the
impact of a liberal arts degree on females’ confidence levels
when searching for employment when she herself experienced the same
setbacks.

“Growing up I had certain ideas of what I could do with my
education, and certain things that were not possible,” she
explained. “I sort of felt like a liberal arts education may
not have been one of those things that could be seen as beneficial
to me.”

She set out to find out if others like her felt the same way. She
interviewed women from rural areas across Newfoundland, asking them
about the experiences and feelings they had while completing a
liberal arts degree.

“I wanted to find out how they came to the decisions to
study, what it meant to them, the way they felt about their
degrees. I also analyzed the provincial policy document on
post-secondary education, and I wanted to get a sense of whether
the way the provincial government felt about post-secondary
education matched up with the feelings of the women I
interviewed,” she said.

She discovered that the document demonstrated a strong sense of
economic purpose for post-secondary education, but that the social
and personal benefits to a post-secondary education are not
mentioned.

“A lot of the women talked about how happy an education made
them. There are some representatives from the Canadian Federation
of Students (CFS) involved in creating these policy documents, but
it’s mostly members of the legislature. Policy documents
don’t involve students as much as they probably
should,” she concluded.

Neither recipient used practical method for their research, meaning
that instead of using the Likert Scale, they personally interviewed
their subjects. There were no rating scales involved.

According to Albert Johnson, that’s a pretty big deal.

“What’s really positive about the award,” he
said, “is that it’s saying, ‘Yes, your method is
fine.’ People are accepting the story now. Accepting
narrative as viable research. It may be a renaissance in teaching.
And I’ve been waiting for that for 30 years.”